“Black”, “Homo” And “Freaking Females”: Heated Scenes As Retailers Turn On Each Other At Marvel NYCC Q&A

The following all came out of Marvel’s adjunct to Diamond’s Retailer Breakfast ahead of New York Comic Con, happening today. You can catch up with any other Retailer Breakfast announcements here. But this was when the retailers got to ask Marvel stuff, with a panel made up of Tom Brevoort, Nick Lowe, Christina Hanigan and Charles Soule. And it didn’t go well.

Things started innocently enough. Marvel answered a question that, no, there wouldn’t be a Secret Empire Omega #2 even though there was a Secret Empire Omega #1. A question was raised about not including an issue number #1 on future one-shots anymore, to resounding retailer applause.

Marvel replied to concerns about the Avengers: No Surrender weekly run starting in January being on time. Marvel stated that six issues had been completed and the series is written to its 15th issue with only the 16th final issue yet to be written.

Another retailer felt short-changed by not getting a Hulk #700, as the series went to Marvel legacy numberings too late. Brevoort talked about how the followed the numbering pattern set by Stan Lee. And Brevoort said he was more than willing to join the retailer Facebook group to argue the point with everyone.

Another questioner asked about the Marvel universe being more interconnected and Charles Soule said that at the last retreat, the writers made a point to figure out a way to make that happen more often. It is very important to them and he used New York Mayor Wilson Fisk as an example of that.

Then one retailer got lots of applause for objecting to the ordering process for the Marvel Lenticular covers – Bleeding Cool has covered repeated objections from other retailers to the way Marvel Comics have handled this.

But objections kept being brought up and soon retailers were was bringing up the fact that Marvel now had female versions of characters instead of the males, with echoing shouts from the crowd of retailers about not changing all the characters all at once – which is something I have also heard Marvel executives themselves echo. But things were getting tense.

Two older retailers started raising their voices arguing about diversity and how it does not work. The words “black”, “homo” and “freaking females” were used multiple times, at which point other retailers started to boo those retailers and the room started to turn on itself. Marvel editor Nick Lowe tried to get calm by saying that Marvel try and they tell stories for everyone, that the old heroes are not going anywhere, neither are the new ones, there is room for them both.

The panel ended sharply, with Marvel‘s Senior Vice President of Sales David Gabriel saying that he would give out his e-mail address to any retailer who still had concerns. And with that everyone got kicked out of the area.

The conversations still continued. Here’s one retailer challenging Marvel‘s Senior Vice President of Sales David Gabriel immediately afterwards…

Marvel’s David Gabriel being interrogated, but not by the retailers who used such words…

Looks like the conversations reported earlier in the year are still playing out.